Typical Summertime Pattern

Just a typical summertime pattern for us here in the east with the occasional chance of ISOLATED thunderstorms for the foreseeable future.  But what I'd like to briefly focus on is the map above.  The green lines show the cold front that limped through Sunday night and Monday and is now simply a boundary or focus for afternoon convection for most of this week.  There is some minimal upper air energy associated with with the tail end of this front just east of the Arklotex region as evidenced by the brighter clouds in the satellite pic.  The one idea of the red area of disturbed weather moving NW and joining forces with that dying front and upper air support to develop a weak tropical system does have some merit.  The blue area is also a candidate to develop into a tropical system in the Gulf as shown.  I do believe that by Saturday this week, we will have Bret one way or the other.  But that is really the extent of the exciting weather east of the Mississippi.

The map above is the GFS ensembles for this Friday.  As you can see, the hottest of the weather is out over the 4 corners region and a persistent trough is located here in the east.  Now that is not necessarily a "cool" pattern for us, but truly hot weather is not possible with that upper air configuration.  Temps will be at normals or slightly above the 30 year running mean.  But, by Sunday, the GFS hints that some heat will try to come east from the Great Basin and give us a spell of 90+ wx, but again, I do not see 3 days consecutive to give us a bona fide heat wave.  Nevertheless, it will be quite warm with above average temps.  The map below is the depiction for this upcoming Sunday evening.

The above map does also support possible inroads of a tropical system into the SE US.  If that would be the case, some much needed rainfall would be observed over GA and the Carolinas.  This system would also have the added benefit of trimming the heat into the SE, but the humidity of course would be quite oppressive.  This is simply speculation at this point, but the modeling does support this type of synoptic outcome!

As for the longer term, more of the same is a safe bet.  Summer doldrums is what you might like to describe this weather.  The Euro modeling, as seen on the left, has a slightly deeper trough here over the east insisting the month of July will simply be held to within a degree or 2 of normal either side.  Our normal maxes for the warmest time of the year here in Harrisburg is 87F so look for temps to be consistently near the mid-upper 80s for much of this month.

In closing, I'd like to give a shout out to those of you who are die hard Pirate fans.  Here we are with just one week of baseball before the All-Star break and those Besting Bucs are 44-41 playing at a 0.518 clip.  This is the latest in the year that they have been above 0.500 since 1992!  They are only 1.5 games behind those crafty Cardinals.  In 1992, the Pirates finished 1st in the NL East at 96-66.  Yes, this team was led by skipper Jim Leyland and played in that multi-sport facility known as 3 Rivers Stadium.  This was the team with Van Slyke, Drabek, Gibson, McClendon, Wakefield, and yes......even Barry Bonds when he looked like an emaciated, scrawny, malnourished OF!  The Pirates did lose in 7 games to the Braves in the NLCS that year and that was their last taste of real success for quite some time.  Unless they could play the Phillies at PNC Park all the time where they have a 22-13 record against the Phils in their home venue.  I for one would like to see the Pirates continue on this year and make that central division in the NL somewhat interesting for the Brew-Crew, the Cards, and the Reds!

Have a good week!

Smitty

AA:  Typical summertime weather....nothing real hot, nothing cool like last week.  And the Pittsburgh Pirates are fun to watch again!